1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to article dispensing, and more particularly, to an automatic storage and retrieval system for motor vehicle keys.
2. History of the Prior Art
The organized storage and controlled access retrieval of small articles, such as keys, is a serious management problem in numerous businesses. For example, businesses which deal with a large number of motor vehicles such as an automobile dealership, are required to organize, store and provide ready controlled access to hundreds and even thousands of keys to different automobiles over a relatively short period of time. Systems for doing this with clerical personnel and key tags, organizer envelopes and other systems of maintaining an orderly accounting of the keys have proven woefully inadequate. It frequently occurs that the clerical personnel lose track of who has the keys to a particular automobile, whether or not a particular automobile has been sold or is available for demonstration to a customer, and how to locate the keys to a particular vehicle within the collection of keys to hundreds of other vehicles.
In the past, attempts have been made to provide various types of organization bins, key coding schemes and the like in order to facilitate the storage and retrieval of small articles such as keys. Such systems are slow, unwieldy and provide no means of ready and controlled access to the articles while also maintaining management control records of access history over a period of time. Such access history is highly desirable in certain business such as the dispensing of controlled drugs in a hospital or the dispensing of vehicle keys in the operation of an automobile dealership.
Other businesses, such as hotels, motels, car rental agencies and the like also encounter similar key organization and storage and retrieval problems.
Numerous prior art vending systems have been proposed in which articles to be vended are associated with a particular organization slot of a vending mechanism and upon entry of a authorized vending token, such as a magnetic card, dispense the article to a requesting party, maintain accounting records as to the distribution of the article to that party and then clear the record when the party returns the article to the mechanism. U.S. Pat. No. 4,458,802 discloses such a system. Certain disadvantages are inherent in such prior art vending machines. Generally, these systems require an article to be directly associated with a particular storage location in the vending mechanism and are not universally adaptable as to where the article might be stored upon its introduction into the system. In addition, such systems do not generally include a provision for storing information to be maintained in the memory of the device in direct association with both the article and the location within the mechanism where the article stored for later retrieval. Finally, no facilities are provided for the production of periodic management reports as to the frequency with which each article is accessed and by whom.
The system of the present invention overcomes many of the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a system wherein an article such as a key holder may be incoded with an indicia bearing label containing detailed information as to the vehicle associated with that particular key. When a labeled key holder is introduced, the memory of the system stores the information associated with that particular key and then assigns to it a specific storage location within the storage and retrieval mechanism. Each person who is authorized to access keys is also given a distinct identification code. When the key to a particular vehicle is requested by an authorized user it may be quickly located and delivered. If a requested key is not available the system informs the requesting party as to who has the key. In addition, the indicia enables the storage of information with respect to which individuals access the keys to which vehicles over a period of time for the preparation of periodic management reports.